Archive of Our Own ^beta

Thirteen years after the Frost Shepherd arrived, Hella Varal reunited with Hadrian in their temple at the Last University. 

Hadrian was the one to close the distance between them, pulling his dearest friend in an embrace as tight as he could manage. Hella didn’t cry, but she did let her practiced neutral expression collapse, her brow furrowing and the corners of her mouth pushing into a deep frown. “It’s good to see you,” she murmured. 

“It’s good to see you too,” he replied. He pulled away, placing his hands on the sides of her arms. “Let’s sit.” 

When Hella had last been here, the temple’s pews had been little more than rough-hewn wooden benches, but over time they’d been rebuilt to be padded, soft, and comfortable to sit on. Hella didn’t want to start with the hard stuff, so she asked, “What kind of food are you growing here these days?” 

Hadrian smiled. “We planted pomegranate seeds, and they really took. Now they bear fruit the size of your head.” 

“My head or yours?” Hella asked and Hadrian laughed. 

“It varies.” 

Hella had taken an interest in gardening since leaving the Last University. How could she not have, when the whole world had become a garden? It had taken her a long time to learn to stop destroying that which she didn’t understand, and it had taken her even longer to learn to start cultivating it. Getting Adaire to agree to settle, at least for a time, had likewise been an uphill battle, and one she’d avoided fighting for a few months after they’d left. “We’ll get a tent,” Adaire had said. “We’ll travel.” Hella hadn’t argued, at first. 

“Where have you been?” Hadrian asked her. 

“Nacre, if you can believe it.”

Hadrian fell silent. And then he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed. 

“I won’t destroy it again,” Hella said solemnly. “I promised Adelaide that much.”

“Oh yeah?”

“When I told her she went, ‘Why would I care if you destroyed it again? Technically I’m the one who destroyed it the first time.’ But I care. I would care. Even if that version of Nacre was just as much of a shithole as the first one I found. Anyway, we aren’t in Nacre. We’re kind of just outside of it. I could convince Adaire to stay in one place but I couldn’t convince her to let that one place be a city. And it’s fine. Nice, even.”

“And she’s not here,” Hadrian clarified.

“No,” Hella chuckled. “She laughed in my face when I asked her to come.” It had been a sharp, brutal laugh. A single “Ha!” and then silence. 

“How’d you convince her to settle down?” 

“It got easier as the years went on. She’s getting old too, you know.”

Hella hadn’t aged the way Hadrian had. Tabard had explained this to her: she aged on the outside, but not on the inside. Her eyes were ringed by crows’ feet and her hair was streaked with grey, but her joints didn’t ache, her bones weren’t fragile, she didn’t have trouble keeping food down. There was still an exhaustion to her, though, even if that exhaustion wasn’t physical. Hadrian though...every aspect of him was worn down, like an ancient stone façade, cracked and crawling with moss. She explained her situation to Hadrian and he nodded contemplatively. 

“Will you die of old age?” he asked. The unspoken “like I will” hung in the air between them. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She hadn’t asked Tabard about that bit. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? If I’m not gone when Adaire and Rix and Rowe are I’ll just go into Adularia after them. No problem.” 

“Right. No problem.”

“You aren’t dying, right? I mean you’re old, you look a bit like shit—“

“Thanks.”

“—but you aren’t dying dying are you?” 

“I don’t know,” Hadrian said after a pause. “I don’t think so. But I’ve taken so many hits, Hella. And unlike you, I’m not stone on the inside. Sometimes it hurts just to get out of bed in the morning. I have this cane that I use to get around now sometimes and I—it helps. But it doesn’t always help enough. I’m worried there’ll be a day when I won’t even be able to leave the house, and I’m worried that that day will come sooner than I want it to.” He turned over his hands and held them palm up in his lap. They were calloused and scarred. 

“Your hands. They’re shaking a little.” 

“Runs in the family. My mother’s hands shook too. Gets worse with age.” 

Hella took his hand, holding it steady between her own. “Are you happy, Hadrian?” she asked. 

He was silent. So was she. He took deep, slow breaths. “How could I not be?” he finally said. “My family is thriving. My community is thriving. The world isn’t perfect but it’s still beautiful, and so much better than the one we left behind. It’s been thirteen years and Galenica still hasn’t reconfigured it, so maybe even they see it that way as well.”

“But?”

“I don’t know!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “There is no ‘but’. Or at least there shouldn’t be.” He pulled his hand from Hella’s and buried his face in his palms. “What we learned in Aubade was that I don’t know how to be happy. And circumstances were different there, I was away from my family and I knew that the world outside was crumbling, but—“

“Some of the principles still apply,” Hella finished. 

“Yeah.” 

“It’s the same. For me,” Hella agreed. 

“Can I tell you a story?” Hadrian asked suddenly, grabbing her hand again. 

“Of course.”

“It’s a religious story. From before. From the Church of Samothes. Obviously my sermons aren’t based on him anymore, but sometimes—sometimes I have to fall back on what I know. Anyway. There was a man. Musa. And in the version of the story I heard growing up he was a soldier who’d taken many innocent lives, but in other versions he was a highwayman, or a lazy and selfish prince. Either way, he was exiled, or he—he left his homeland. Out of guilt for whatever he’d done. And he lived alone for a time before Samothes came to him. It was a time of strife in Hieron and so Samothes had built a city where his people could be safe. And he asked Musa to gather up Samothes’ followers and lead them to that city. Musa initially refused. He said to Samothes, ‘No. I am unclean. I am guilty of these crimes, I cannot be a leader, and I don’t deserve to be one.’ But Samothes insisted, and eventually Musa relented, and began his work.

“And he was successful! He gathered all of Samothes’ followers from all across Hieron and led them to the City of Light. But just before he got there he made...a mistake. That mistake varied by the teller and even by the day. Whatever lesson the church wanted to teach, whatever evil they wanted to preach against, that was the mistake he made. And Samothes saw and said ‘No. You have made a terrible mistake, and for that reason I cannot allow you to enter the City of Light.’ And Musa, who was, for his part, pretty old, died just outside of it.” 

“Harsh,” Hella remarked. “But I see your point.” The parallels to her own life were difficult to miss. 

“I’m not done yet,” Hadrian continued. “Because I talked about this with Alyosha once. And I said the exact same thing you did. Isn’t this harsh? And Alyosha put things in a different perspective. He said, ‘Samothes didn’t ban Musa from the city because he made one mistake. He banned him for a lifetime of mistakes, of murder or thievery or unjust rule. The last mistake was merely Our Lord’s single justification, but did not represent the full scope of his reasoning. Leading the people to the city was not a reward, but a punishment, and Musa would not have been able to enter the city even if he hadn’t made that final error.’”

“It still doesn’t sound fair,” Hella said softly, looking down at her and Hadrian’s hands. 

“Of course it isn’t fair! But that also doesn’t make it untrue. You spend a lifetime atoning for something, for anything, and it seemingly makes no difference. You still see no city. You’re still unhappy. Of course I—I never expected suffering to go away—“

“That would be boring, wouldn’t it,” Hella mused. “Feeling nothing but joy all the time.” 

“—Yeah. But I—I don’t know.”

“Can I tell you a story?” Hella asked. 

“Of course.”

Hella wasn’t a storyteller. Not the way her friends were. She recognized the power of a good story, but she didn’t usually desire to tell her own. All of her stories were pretty bleak. “This actually happened to me,” she prefaced. “When I was a kid. Have you ever seen a polluted river?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“They weren’t like, everywhere in Ordenna, but they were more common there than in the rest of Hieron. There was one behind my house growing up. It had been polluted a long time. And one day I was out walking by it when I met a frog. And I gave it a bit of my food and went on my way. Then it kept showing up, waiting for me to feed it. So I did. I don’t know why I did it, it was just kind of a whim. But eventually I grew to like this frog. It was like a pet. And I saw how polluted the water it was living in was, and I wanted to move it. So I took stones and mud from the river bank and clean water from our well and I dug a pond for it.”

“Good grief, Hella, how long did this take?”

“Just a couple of days. I was a kid. I was strong. It wasn’t like I was doing anything else. And I moved the frog to the pond. It seemed happy, swimming around in clean water for the first time. But then I went back the next day and it was dead, belly-up in the water.”

“That...really fucking sucks.”

“Yeah! It really fucking sucked! I was inconsolable for days! I didn’t understand that it had adapted to the poison in the river, and that it wouldn’t do well in clean water now.” Now it was Hella’s turn to bury her face in her hands. “I didn’t understand that frog. Now I am that frog. I don’t know what to do with all this clean water I have here.” 

“Well,” Hadrian said bluntly. “You aren’t dead.”

Hella snorted into her palms. “No I’m not. Although I should be at least three times over.” 

“Why do you get to decide that?”

“Hm?” Hella looked up. 

“Why do you get to decide whether or not you should be dead?”

“I’ve decided a lot of other people should be dead pretty unilaterally.”

“Deciding you should be dead unilaterally doesn’t make that right. I don’t think you should be dead. Adaire probably agrees. Why is your opinion more important than ours?” 

Hella’s eyes narrowed. “You told me about Throndir’s whole like ‘restorative justice’ thing. Is this that? Is this what that is?” 

“This is a very small piece of ‘Throndir’s whole like restorative justice thing’. But you being dead changes nothing and helps no one. I would miss you. I have missed you. That’s all.” 

“I’ve missed you too.” 

With that, Hadrian leaned his head on Hella’s shoulder, linking their arms together. She let their breathing fall into rhythm. The temple was peaceful, serene even, with no one inside but them. No eyes but those of the little figurines on the gods’ altars. 

“In retrospect,” Hadrian finally said. “I have been mostly happy all these years. I don’t miss old Hieron. Even a little. Everything I was searching for I—I found it. Purpose, direction, love, stability, it’s all here. I think. You were the only piece I missed. About traveling, about all that world-saving garbage. Everything else I was looking for is here.”

“Don’t make me fucking cry Hadrian.”

“Stay.”

“Stop.”

“Come back.” 

“Hadrian. Hadrian I can’t. I want to, I really do, but I—I just can’t. Visiting you is one thing, but how do I approach literally anyone else? Your son? You know I used to be ‘Aunt Hella’?” 

“You could be, again.” 

“No. I—I’d have to make it up. And I can’t.” 

“You can . You sh—you can.” 

Hella brushed tears furiously from her eyes. “Okay, well, what about Adaire? I might want to come back, but she—do you know how much fucking work it took to convince her to stay in a place where she was all but certain no one hated her? I was—she broke her leg. A few years ago, right after we settled in Nacre, she broke her leg. She couldn’t even stand, much less run away. And even then she was all packed up and ready to head out again. She was so sure she’d have to make a run for it. Not to mention that she didn’t even want to visit here! I’m not going to leave her behind, she’s my wife!”

“I know she’s your wife! You could—you could do what you’re doing in Nacre now, you could live outside of the Last University, but close enough to come in and visit more often. Even Fero has visited a few times since—and he hated all of us for the longest time! I’m not the only one who misses you, either! Lem misses you, Ephrim and Throndir fucking miss you! You haven’t been writing to them!”

Hella stood, gripping the back of the pew in front of them so hard that she feared the wood would splinter. She screwed her face up as scalding hot tears rolled down her cheeks. “Stop it. Hadrian, stop it.” 

“Please. Just consider it.”

“I have! Don’t you think that I have? That I’ve considered it every day for the past thirteen fucking years? That I miss this place? This is my consideration: it can’t be done and I’m sorry.” 

Hadrian reached out and took her hand again, slowly loosening her fingers from the back of the pew. “Thank you for your apology.” He paused, then said, “I forgive you. For everything.”

“You do?” Hella blinked her eyes open, her vision blurry. 

“Of course. You were forgiven years ago, in my mind.”

“It’s never—I never asked for it.”

“I know. I’m giving it to you. It’s called for give ness for a reason.” 

“I don’t need it.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But if you want it, here it is.”

“You’re not the only person who has reason to be mad at me. You’re not the only person I’ve wronged.”

“I never said I was. But all you’ve done to me, me personally, and no one else, I’ve forgiven you for. I want you to know that.” 

Hella slumped back down in her seat, feeling hollow and drawn out. Adelaide’s mosaic stared at her from the wall, eyes glittering. “Those are new,” she remarked, nodding towards the altars. 

“They’ve sprung up mostly organically over the years. Turns out when you tell people about all of the gods, they’ll all pick favorites. Or, at least, favorites depending on the day. If you’ve lost a loved one, go to Adelaide, if you want to start a new project, Samothes, if you want to relax, go to Samot.” 

“And you don’t miss them? The gods?”

Hadrian pursed his lips and shook his head. “Not even a little. I respect them, I think, but missing them implies I would want them back in my life. And I super don’t. I’m too old for that kind of drama.” 

Hella laughed softly. 

“How is Adelaide, by the way? Not like I get a chance to see her.”

“She’s—she’s Adelaide. She’s my wife. I love her very much. She’s still dramatic, we still snipe at each other, and Adularia is grander than it’s ever been. She’s happy.” 

“Good! That’s good.”

Silence again. She and Hadrian had learned to exist in comfortable silence together, the way only the oldest of friends could. The air between them was gentle, not awkward, and Hadrian leaned his head on her shoulder again. “If you can’t come back. At least visit more often than every thirteen years. And write to the others. I think they’d like to hear from you. And if you ever wanna try out ‘Throndir’s restorative justice thing’, you should let him know. He’d be thrilled to tell you about it.” 

“Okay. I can do that. I think I can do that.” 

“Make me a promise.” 

“I promise I can do that.”